MHD

Mohamed Sylla, born on November 28, 1994, in La Roche-sur-yon, a suburb near Paris, is a French rapper of Guinese and Senegalese origin. MHD is under contract with the label Artside. In addition, TopNotch (Dutch record label) has a promotion deal with the rapper. MHD is the founder of the Afro trap style. Afro trap is a mix of French-speaking rap, Afrobeat and Trap. After his music was received positively in his own environment the rapper decided to post his music on YouTube. MHD is known for his Afro trap part sequel, and at the time of writing this, there has already an Afro trap part 8 been released. His music has become well known with the larger public because many radiostations started to broadcast his songs. In the clips of the Afro trap series the camera man always walks backwards. MHD usually follows the camera man, sometimes sitting on a driving car or standing on a moving hoverboard. The rapper is well-known for his musical African dances. These dances were picked-up by the French national soccer team. The soccer players imitated these in hotelrooms or on the pitch after a goal was made. MHD is a member of the rapgroup 19 Reseaux, a group that is not very well known yet.

MHD’s largest fanbase is in Paris. He also participated in a commercial of Adidas. In the commercial he receives a Real Madrid shirt from soccer player Karim Benzema. In that commercial MHD did a short Freestyle on his instrumental of Afro part 3 (Champions League). Things went very fast with the rapper, as he mentioned in an interview with the BBC: ”Six to seven months ago I delivered pizzas, and now I played in a advert of Real Madrid, its incredible!’. MHD cooperates frequently with African artists like Angelique Kidjo, a singer from Benin and the Congolese Fally Ipupa. That’s because he listens a lot to African music. MHD said he gets a lot of inspiration from listening to music on his phone. On Spotify, the rapper scores a lot less views compared to YouTube. For example, his track Afro Trap part 3 (Champions League) has 16,9 million views on Spotify, compared to 73 million on YouTube. Still, the rapper has a strong 1,2 million listeners per month.

MHD dreamed to become a professional soccer player. The dream has not come true, even though there are a lot of soccer-related lyrics in his songs. As an example, he has a song named Roger Milla, this is an former international of Cameroon. Roger Milla was well known for his dances after scoring a goal. Because of Roger Milla, goals were celebrated ever more funny. In the clip ”Roger Milla” MHD can also be seen dancing a lot. Roger Milla and MHD have two things in common. They can both be seen as founder of something in their own way, and they both are incredible dancers. Any way, we will hear a lot of this young rapper in the future.